Check if a file with a pattern is available in the directory using batch script

Question

A file is dropped in a directory when another job finished processing it. The requirement is to run a batch script to check whether the file is available for today. and if available, I need to execute certain batch script. (Example: File with Naming pattern ABC-D*.txt should be available with modification date=today)

What I have figured out till now is:

FOR /F "tokens=1,2,3* Delims=/ " %%I in ('DATE /T') DO set TODAY=%%I-%%J-%%K
xcopy C:\BatchJobs\Odd*.* /L /D:%TODAY%

Running this is giving the output:

C:\BatchJobs\OddEven.txt
File cannot be copied onto itself
0 File(s)

C:\BatchJobs\OddEven.txt, showing in console is what I need. But I need to store it in some file or in some variable to be able to use this path later in my batch script. Can somebody help me in storing this file path in a variable or a file? Or suggest some other ways to achieve this goal?

aschipfl · Accepted Answer · 2018-06-24 21:55:28Z

3

You could use forfiles which is capable of filtering files by their last modification date, but not regarding the time:

forfiles /P "D:\ROOT" /M "ABC-D*.txt" /D +0 /C "cmd /C echo @file"

Instead of echo you can state your batch script to execute.

answered Jun 24, 2018 at 21:55

aschipfl

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2 Comments

Ritam Das Over a year ago

Currently the file name is showing in quote. Any way to remove the quote?

aschipfl Over a year ago

forfiles expands all its path-related variables including surrounding quotes; to remove them, use a for loop, like this: forfiles /P "D:\ROOT" /M "ABC-D*.txt" /D +0 /C "cmd /C for %%I in (@file) do @echo/%%~I"

lit · Accepted Answer · 2018-06-27 13:57:33Z

2

This code will identify "ABC-D*.txt" files last written today. Place the code below into a file such as doit.ps1 (but choose a better name). I did an attrib command on the file, but you will want to do something else.

$srcdir = 'C:\src\t\empty'

Get-ChildItem -File -Path $srcdir -Filter 'ABC-D*.txt' |
    Where-Object { $_.LastWriteTime -ge [datetime]::Today } |
    ForEach-Object {
        # Do something to the $_ file
        & attrib $_
    }

Then, you can run it from a cmd shell with:

powershell -NoProfile -File doit.ps1

edited Jun 27, 2018 at 13:57

answered Jun 24, 2018 at 20:52

lit

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2 Comments

user6811411 Over a year ago

A simpler/shorter way to get todays date at 00:00:00.000 is [datetime]::Today

Esperento57 Over a year ago

or (get-date).Date ;)

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